There seems to be a fascination with dying, probably because everybody dies. The internet is obsessed with it.

Some people view death as a blessing.

I do not.

It is the final release, but I side with Dylan Thomas and choose to “not go gentle into that good night.”

Death will have to drag me out, kicking and screaming, clutching the last breath.

I have sat by bedsides, but never at the very last.

My Father died alone in a hospice. I got the phone call. He was just days short of 62, the age that would have locked in a pension. The attendants said he was an ideal patient because he never complained.

My Mother made it into the 90s, at a “rest home” in Buffalo, New York. She would have considered it a “transition.”

We had very dear Riverside friends, Ossie and Edith Jonas. Edith was Shirley’s piano teacher, and we spent many wonderful hours at their house making music together. Then, one day, after returning from a trip abroad, Ossie told us how, at a party during their vacation to Germany and Austria, Edith the wife of his life, said she was a little tired, went upstairs to bed and slipped quietly away. Ossie came back to us but was never the same. He just endured. Both had escaped the Nazis in the 1930s, barely getting out, while many of their close family were not so lucky. Another terrible tragedy to be endured. But Ossie and Edith left a rich musical legacy, both well-respected in academia and music circles, and Edith’s children from previous marriage also went on to enrich the world with their work. I am lucky to have known such wonderful people.

I stop myself here, because I’ve already dealt with Shirley’s death and if I relive it again, I’ll stop writing.

My Daughter has helped me turn to life where I can keep Shirley alive in my heart and memory to the last of my days.

But I’ve started a series of speculations, and haven’t finished yet. I guess it helps to get thoughts “out there” where they can be dealt with.

1960 was a difficult year for me. I was in my first year at college and laziness ran me into the brick wall where concentration and homework required effort for what was no longer easy for me, you had to read some things twice, and revise a paper before turning it in.

That was the year I lost two of my idols, the greatest tenor and the greatest baritone. Jussi Bjoerling and Leonard Warren. Each died too early, both at the same age of 49, both at the height of their operatic careers. Bjoerling was preparing for his last performance. He said his voice would deepen as he got older, making him ready for the heavy roles, Wagner, Otello. He drank too much from stage fright. His heart stopped.

Warren died on stage in mid-performance, just after completing his aria.

I never got to hear either of them live.

Life is a series of missed opportunities.

The public obsession with death has singled out the curious tradition that hovers like a curse over Saturday Night Live.

Gilda Radner, we all loved her, died so young, 42, leaving her husband Gene Wilder whom we loved equally. We said, “Why?” and “No!”

John Belushi began the series curse of overweight comedians, only 33, drug overdose, heroin and cocaine, in 1982.

He was succeeded by the next fat comic, they always had one, John Candy, 1994, age 43, heart attack, serious anxiety, panic attack, obesity (375 lbs.), alcohol drug related.

Then, in succession, Chris Farley, overweight, 1997, age 33, drug overdose.

Is there a pattern here? Yes.

Those were the days when people were trying to see the connection of obesity, drugs, early death. The public jumped to conclusions. The rumor was that Mama Cass, grotesquely obese but still with a strong contralto voice, died in 1974 at age 32, they said by choking on a ham sandwich. The medical conclusion was heart attack.

Death haunted SNL. The great Phil Hartman died at age 49 in 1996 when his mentally disturbed wife shot him and then committed suicide.

Richard Pryor set himself on fire while freebasing cocaine. He lived to be 65 and died in 2005. Shirley and I saw him once on Hollywood Boulevard early in his career. He was across the street, and we yelled, “We love you!” He said, “Ok.”

Andy Kaufman died of lung cancer in 1984 at the age of 35. Our friend, New York Judy, knew him from school, and she passed the phone to me during her conversation with him. I quipped with my usual insensitivity, “We’ve been worried about you. Surely you must have felt that.” He said, “No, not really.”

Those were the days, the second half of the 20th century, when a lot was going on. College students were becoming aware, and rallied. We had gone through assassinations designed to keep us quiet, but that didn’t work as well as “they” hoped. On May 4, 1970, the Kent State massacre on the Ohio campus hit the national media when the National Guard shot students, killed 4, wounded 9.

On the same day, at Jackson State, 2 students were killed, 12 wounded, but it didn’t get comparable coverage because it was Mississippi and the students were black.

I am awash in loss. My mind rambles. I think of Fritz Wunderlich, ready for the mantle Bjoerling bequeathed, Germany’s greatest tenor, a perfect, clear, ringing young voice, died at 35 in 1966 by accidentally falling downstairs.

So of course I think of Joseph Schmidt, a superb tenor too short for the stage, 5’ 01/4”, who wowed audiences on film but, like so many Jewish musicians, fled the Nazis and died in Zurich from a heart attack at age 38. I still have his records, old heavy 78 rpm.

And Richard Tauber, the tenor of operetta for whom entire productions were written, who moved to London when Germany went out of control, kept singing until he died of lung cancer in 1948 at the age of 56. I cherish the video of those last performances, Schubert, courageously and masterfully singing when his lungs were failing, and three days after the performance his left lung was removed.

What a century!

Things came alive in all directions, and we started to worry seriously about the planet. Isms were identified, tested, opposed as needed, or supported when appropriate.

Dick Gregory, that beloved black comedian, took on the burden of his race, decided that the classic “racial obesity” could be traced to the poor food slaves had to eat, scraps from the master’s table, and whatever they could grow on their own, and that led to the lower life expectancy of African Americans. He believed he was hindered by poor nutrition and drug and alcohol abuse, became a vegetarian and fasting activist, leading hunger strikes to attract publicity in an effort to cheat death. His book, Cookin’ with Mother Nature, came out in 1973, and he himself lived from 1932 to 2017 when he died of heart failure at 84. Of course I miss him. We lived so much at the same time, and he informed my generation.

I know I’ve been rambling. How did I get here? One thing leads to another, and anywhere can lead to anywhere else. I wanted to do a serious consideration of death, maybe probingly philosophical, but I already know where that will lead, and over the years I’ve been taking it in small doses and large bites.

I think, for instance, of the question continually asked in the movie Moonstruck, when Olympia Dukakis tries to reach a conclusion: “Why do men cheat on their wives? I think it’s because they’re afraid of death…” That opens several cans of worms, and the movie never answers beyond a resolution. But my interest is perked by the presence in the film of Feodor Chaliapin Jr., son of the great Russian basso at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th who freed opera forever from the constraints of stasis and mere vocal ornamentation. Junior, by 1987, is convincingly old enough to play the grumpy grandfather walking the dogs. This is as close as I can get to the presence of that great idol of mine, whom I’ve discussed at some length, even in essays on poetic language.

And Olympia Dukakis! Everyone’s favorite landlady, Anna Madrigal, in Tales of the City. Her cousin ran for President, and I entered into a spirited epistolary conversation with him back and forth, detailed letters giving him a plan of action, and when he lost the election, I was sure it was because he failed to heed my advice. I saw Olympia only once in person, at the Getty Villa amphitheater in Malibu where they regularly put on the Greek classics in the summer, and, to cut corners, they hired her alone to portray a whole chorus of women. Hmpf.

Have I done it now? Avoided being trapped in thoughts about death? Possibly, probably, maybe. I know death is a journey from which “no traveler returns.” So while we’re alive, we should live life.

As a teacher, I spent those endless hours working with students to lift them to a higher level, a wider view, ready to live a happy life. We agreed that, rather than look down on those lower, we should lift them up and share the world.

Meanwhile, death can wait.